public scope : Java Glossary

Classes, methods, variables and constants that any user of the class is permitted
to see and use, whether they belong to the same package or not, whether or not they
are subclasses of this class. All interfaces are implicitly public. If you have a variable or method you want users of your
class to be able to access, you must declare it public.
Often public getters/setters wrap private variables. This way you can later insert extra validation
code if needed. Other classes cannot bypass your checks since they can’t get at
the private variable directly.